pssst pass it round... #amazonfail like...dude

And it's all the buzz on uber-spakwad plebplob site Twitter apparently and a bunch of blogs.

And it's all do to with the heinous crime that Amazon had apparently temporarily delisted some gay and lesbian books from their searches or sale ranks. Apparently it was just a mistake anyway, but a look at the disproportionate furor it caused, or rather we are led to believe it caused shows that some people have got real problems with their political priorities, and without question that's being supported by the media.

Amazon are a huge business, and even it wasn't a mistake I kind of doubt they would have had any political reason reason behind this.

The Wall Street Journal's blog says:

"In the message, Amazon said it excludes “adult” material from searches and best-seller lists by not calculating their sales ranks. Mr. Probst (some blogger ? -j) wrote that the “adult” classification didn’t apply to several of the targeted books and that some adult-oriented books, including a hardcover edition of “Playboy: The Complete Centerfolds,” continued to maintain their ranking. He also pointed to the blog of Craig Seymour, a writer who has noted his troubles with Amazon and sales rankings since February"

And of course the WSJ loves it, as do the media as a whole, because the whole gay issue has tremendous utility as a proxy issue, and has possibly become the de facto way of chipping away at the status quo by proxy.

Personally, and I don't mean to be rude, but I don't see some extension of the civil rights movement at all in any of this stuff.

I don't know about this blogger, and it's not all gays, but overall you do see a group of hysterical people trying to rationalise themselves predominantly, and completely the wrong way and getting certain quite important things wrong and alienating themselves even more in the process.

And we see this repeated mistake, this goof, that unfortunately some gay people do have about themselves, that's been encouraged by the media, and that the media propagate which is that: the gay lifestyle has a right to be seen as an equal partner to heterosexuality, and in pretty much any context.

Some of it may just be people who mean well, but frankly, at some point, someone has to say something as well. Sure the odd article in the Daily Mail has come close to this at times, but I don't think seriously it can or should be seen as an equal partner per se and I think trying to do that is a distortion and error for a whole bunch of reasons, and in that sense Amazon are indeed under no obligation to present any books in principle, which is what these campaigners are worried about.

Note I'm not suggesting they shouldn't be published or burnt, what I'm saying is that how others treat them is an entirely different matter. It's not an issue of equality, as the WSJ suggest:

"Neil Giuliano, president of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, says in a statement: “GLAAD has reached out to Amazon.com and they indicate this was an error, so we expect to start seeing evidence of its correction immediately, and any loss of visibility of gay-themed books as a result of this error will be made right by Amazon … When people learn about the lives of gay and transgender people and the common ground we share, the culture changes and advances. It is so important that stories about the lives of our community are available, and that companies like Amazon promote these titles in an equal fashion”

Why ? I'm sure most people aren't that interested in them, and the idea that some gay romances excluded on Amazon represent some 'important' cultural fabric in general that people are 'missing out' on because they are gay is, just probably delusion if that's what's being suggested. And unfortunately we have seen several examples how the organised gay lobby globally is not a rational lobby, but an hysterical and even psychotic one, that's very much a complete renunciation of the most basic 'common ground'.

It's not just enough to blame the wider society for those problems.

If anything its real utility is as a proxy for other issues of 'diversity' and for the media to chip away at essentially Western, conservative, basically normative society.

I don't believe the gay lobby has a whole lot of power on its own or is that significant on its own. Most of that power comes from what the media grants it, and where it's supportive it is so for other reasons.

On the other hand I don't believe all gay people subscribe to the worst aspects of their own frankly dreadful representation and image.

We are probably going to talk about this more at some point, and it's something one always does with a bit of a heavy heart, as it's a topic no one really wants to talk about.